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Democrat lawmakers, gun control advocates call for new restrictions

By Daniel Strauss – 12/14/12 02:01 PM ET

Several Democratic lawmakers, as well as gun control advocates, said that Friday’s fatal shootings at a Connecticut elementary school should move the president and Congress to swiftly address the issue of gun violence in America.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) called on President Obama and Congress to have a “serious discussion about gun control” in response to the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Nadler’s statement came as details continued to emerge about the shooting. According to Connecticut State Police have reported that 20 children and 7 adults, including the shooter, have lost their lives. The alleged shooter, Adam Lanza, 24, of Hoboken, New Jersey, killed his father in Hoboken before driving to the Connecticut school, where he killed his mother, a teacher at the school, and the other adults and children, according to multiple media reports.

“I am absolutely horrified by news of the cold-blooded shooting of dozens of children in Newtown, Conn.,” Nadler said in a statement on Friday. “Yet another unstable person has gotten access to firearms and committed an unspeakable crime against innocent children. We cannot simply accept this as a routine product of modern American life.

“If now is not the time to have a serious discussion about gun control and the epidemic of gun violence plaguing our society, I don’t know when is. How many more Columbines and Newtowns must we live through? I am challenging President Obama, the Congress, and the American public to act on our outrage and, finally, do something about this.”

Another New York Democrat, Rep. Nita Lowey, called the shooting “senseless and heartbreaking” and said there needed to be “concrete action” to prevent further gun violence.

“We cannot tolerate mass shootings as a mere inconvenience or a normal part of our everyday lives,” Lowey said. “Easy availability of the deadliest weapons to the most dangerous people has cost countless lives and caused immeasurable suffering, never more so than today. Our expressions of sympathy must be matched with concrete actions to stop gun violence.”

“It is past time for a national debate on gun control and solutions to ensure that this terrible trend in mass shootings finally comes to an end,” said Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), who lost her husband to a mass murderer on a Long Island commuter train in 1993, echoed Markey’s sentiment.

“There are a lot of unanswered questions right now, but one thing is clear – there’s too much gun violence in our country,” McCarthy said in a release. “These shootings are becoming all too common, and it’s too easy for dangerous people to get the weapons that help them perform mass executions like today’s.

“Leaders in Washington from both parties, and groups like the NRA, all say that now is not the time to talk about how gun safety laws can save lives in America. I agree, now is not the time to talk about gun laws – the time for that conversation was long before all those kids in Connecticut died today.”

“Today is a day for mourning and prayer, but we must immediately get to work to end these senseless, mass killings of innocent Americans. Together, we must act now to stop the carnage,” Van Hollen said in a release.

At a press conference, President Obama said meaningful action should be taken to prevent future shooting tragedies.

The president said “it is time to take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics,” an indication that Obama could be prepared to confront gun control.

Responding to Obama’s press conference, Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said his organization was encouraged by Obama’s comments.

“We were moved by President Obama’s raw emotion during his remarks today,” Gross said. “We are committed to working with him to channel it into the change that is too long overdue.”

In 2010 the Brady campaign gave Obama a failing grade on pushing for stricter gun laws.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) responded that Obama needs to do more than call for action.

“Calling for ‘meaningful action’ is not enough. We need immediate action. We have heard all the rhetoric before,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “What we have not seen is leadership – not from the White House and not from Congress. That must end today. This is a national tragedy and it demands a national response. My deepest sympathies are with the families of all those affected, and my determination to stop this madness is stronger than ever.”

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who introduced legislation to ban high-capacity magazine clips in automatic weapons, also called for action to improve gun control.

“This is a day of great sadness in America, and our hearts go out to the victims and their families,” Lautenberg said. “This latest shooting tragedy is an unthinkable act of violence carried out against young children and innocent people. Americans are sick and tired of these attacks on our children and neighbors and they are sick and tired of nothing being done in Washington to stop the bloodshed. If we do not take action to address gun violence, shooting tragedies like this will continue. As President Obama said, we must act now ‘regardless of the politics.'”

Screening Chief at Miami International Airport was fired as cop for soliciting sex

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
Dec 12, 2012

It is no exaggeration to say that the TSA is manned by an army of perverts and sexual deviants. The amount of stories that have emerged documenting this phenomenon is staggering. Here is yet another.

When it was revealed earlier this month that Miami International Airport had fired more TSA screeners this month for theft than at any other airport in the nation, the Miami New Times did some digging around to find out who was running the show down there.

The free weekly newspaper discovered that one of the head screeners at the airport, Juan Garcia, was fired in 2000 from an 18 year role as a cop. Why? Because he attempted to buy sex from a prostitute who, unfortunately for him, turned out to be one of his undercover colleagues.

Needless to say, Garcia was arrested and charged with soliciting a prostitute, and conduct unbecoming an officer. He resigned from the Miami Police Department shortly thereafter.

Now, Garcia is in charge of overseeing the metal-detectors, body scanners and full body-patdowns used and conducted by TSA screeners at MIA.

Garcia was said to have been hired not too long after his exit from the police department, and according to a TSA spokesperson, the agency had full knowledge of his sexual misdemeanors.

“[Garcia] fully disclosed the charge on his application.” a statement sent to the Miami New Times by the TSA reads.

“As part of a full background check, TSA determined the charge had been dropped and therefore did not violate any hiring qualifications.”

So, in this instance the TSA did perform a background check, and concluded that it didn’t matter that someone who likes to buy sex illegally would be groping the genitals of law abiding Americans on a daily basis.

Earlier this year, a television station in Atlanta reported, however, that the TSA is so backlogged that it is simply forgoing background checks, and hiring just about anybody to grope and irradiate the public.

“In a move that could affect security at airports around the nation, the Transportation Security Administration confirmed Wednesday it had such a backlog of background security checks, airport employers were allowed to hire any employee needed,” WSBTV reported. “TSA officials said the background checks are delayed, but they are processing them as fast as they can.”

Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.

Orlando could soon be the destination of choice for Americans and other holiday makers who wish to avoid TSA harassment, after Orlando International Airport (OIA) said it could follow its neighbor airport, Orlando Sandford, in seeking to replace the government agency with private screeners.

As Fox 35 Orlando reports, the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority (GOAA) is now seeking to institute new customer service standards at the airport, with the Chairman suggesting that private security could be brought in should the TSA fail to meet them.

“Once we establish those (standards), we’ll evaluate,” said Chairman Frank Kruppenbacher. “Can the TSA meet those standards or not? Should we put it out for a bid?” he rhetorically asked.

The airport, currently under TSA security supervision ranks 11th for thefts by security screeners. Kruppenbacher described that as “unacceptable”, and raised the possibility of evicting the TSA.

“I could care less about the politics of this. All I care about is seeing those customers smiling, saying I love the airport, and I love Orlando, and we are going to do that.” Kruppenbacher said.

The Chairman said that members of the GOAA Board will make a decision based on a report due to be submitted in March 2013. If the TSA was deemed to fall outside of the required standards, the airport would then have to apply to be accepted for the TSA’s Screening Partnership Program, which enables airport authorities to opt out of using TSA workers, and instead use private operators to screen passengers, using federal standards and oversight.

Scores of airports throughout the country have already applied to evict the TSA, following the recent passage of a law by the Senate forcing the TSA to reconsider applications after it arbitrarily suspended the SPP program in 2010.

OIA’s neighbour airport, Orlando Sanford International announced in March that it was reapplying to evict the TSA following innumerable horror stories passengers have told of their encounters with the TSA. Airport president Larry Dale noted that the change was designed to provide a more “customer friendly” operation. The application was preliminarily approved in June, and could prompt a stampede of other airport opt-outs.

The TSA has been keen to downplay the opportunity for airports to dispense with their screeners, fearing a mass exodus that could undermine the justification for the agency’s continued existence, especially given the fact that its reputation has been repeatedly savaged by a number of scandals.

The SPP has come under further attack this week following a report released by the congressional investigative Government Accountability Office (GAO)suggesting that TSA should more closely “monitor private versus federal screener performance.”

In a statement relating to the report, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), Ranking Member of the Committee on Homeland Security, advised the TSA not to accept any more SPP applications from airports until the issue has been looked at.

Thompson writes “…some privatized airports do not perform passenger screening as well as their federalized counterparts.”

“TSA does not have the proper controls in place to regularly monitor private screener performance and does not validate data on attrition, absenteeism, and injury rates for privatized screeners.” he adds

“GAO also shows that under the current system, it is impossible to accurately measure any system cost-savings or efficiencies by moving to the SPP model. Therefore, I would urge Administrator Pistole to refrain from approving additional SPP airports until the costs and possible benefits can be accurately assessed and we can more closely monitor the program,” Thompson’s statement reads.

Screeners employed by private companies are already used at 16 airports under the SPP. Republican Representatives John Mica of Florida, Darrell Issa of California and Jason Chaffetz of Utah have pressed TSA head Pistole to implement the mandate and accept applications from other airports. Mica has personally written to 200 airports advising them of the opportunity to op out of using TSA screeners.

“It’s critical that TSA get out of the business of running a huge bureaucracy and human resources operation and refocus its attention on security, analyzing intelligence, and setting the highest risk-based security standards. TSA needs to focus on going after terrorists — not little old ladies, veterans and children.” Mica has said.

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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.

Milwaukee Cop Richard Schoen was fired in May of this year after his superiors saw a dashboard-camera video that shows Schoen climbing into the backseat of his cruiser to repeatedly punch a handcuffed woman in the face. He’s now getting his job back despite the objections of Milwaukee’s police chief and mayor.

According to a FOX 6 story published upon the video’s release, Schoen arrested Jeanine Tracy for being “argumentative and us[ing] profanity” during a traffic stop. While in the backseat of the police cruiser, she yelled and stomped her leg, complaining that it hurt.

Upon arriving at the station, Schoen tried to pull Tracy out of the backseat of his cruiser by her shirt. When Tracy refused to move, Schoen went around to the other side of the car, climbed into the backseat, and began punching Tracy in the face. Schoen then dragged her out of the backseat of his cruiser by her hair. All of this was captured by Schoen’s dash cam. (What was not captured, the department says, is Schoen kneeing Tracy in the stomach after getting her out of the car.)

Department higher-ups wasted no time firing Schoen for his behavior.

“The evidence was very strong and there was no reason to delay,” Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn told FOX 6 in May. “We took appropriate action, and now it will be in the hands of the review authorities.”

Ah yes, “review authorities.” Wisconsin, like almost every state in the country, has a special bill of rights for cops (read more about Police Bill of Rights here). One of the privileges it provides officers is a mandatory review of their termination; in this case, by Milwaukee’s Fire and Police Commission. And do you know what that review concluded? That Schoen gets his job back.

The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office told TODAY’S TMJ4 they got the case last year and they also consulted with the U.S. Attorneys office.

Both decided that no criminal activity took place.

One of three commission panel members voted to fire Schoen.

The others voted to suspend him for 60 days.

City officials are understandably upset:

“They got it wrong,” said Alderman Willie Hines, who can’t believe the decision.

“I think it sends a bad message both to the community and to the members of the Milwaukee Police Department,” said Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.

“This type of behavior should not be tolerated.”

Barrett backs the chief’s call and thinks the commission should have, too.

“They’ve got a difficult job and they’re making some difficult decisions, but i think this is a case where they got it wrong,” said Barrett.

If you live in Milwaukee, the comission’s verdict says you aren’t safe from your own police department. If you work for the Milwaukee PD, this verdict says not only that you are exempt from internal rules for handling suspects, but also that your boss–the chief of police–is impotent, and that the rule of law does not apply to you. Those are pretty terrifying messages to be disseminating in a city that’s still reeling from an investigation into a group of cops who routinely sexually assaulted suspects in order to plant drugs.

The two photos printed on the citation as evidence of speeding show the car was idling at a red light with its brake lights illuminated. A three-second video clip also offered as evidence shows the car motionless, as traffic flows by on a cross street.

The camera that wrongly ticketed Doty on April 24 is in Northeast Baltimore in the 1700 block of E. Cold Spring Lane, at the intersection with Hillen Road. It is the seventh city speed camera that The Baltimore Sun has shown to have produced inaccurate citations bearing erroneous speed readings.

Doty’s is the first case in which the vehicle was clearly stationary. City officials gave no explanation for how it happened.

Doty, a lawyer who lives in Lauraville, said he and his wife were amazed that the ticket was issued, calling it “shockingly obvious” from the images that the car was stopped. He has challenged the ticket and is scheduled to appear in District Court on Friday.

“It was like someone was so obviously asleep at the switch,” he said Wednesday. “I thought that was not supposed to happen.”

The city’s speed camera contractor, Xerox State and Local Solutions, says each potential citation goes through two layers of review to weed out any that have a deficiency, such as an illegible license plate.

Then a Baltimore police officer must review the citation before approving it for issuance to the vehicle owner. Each citation says the officer swears or affirms that the car was going at least 12 mph over the speed limit “based on inspection of the recorded images.” The officer’s signature is also printed.

The Sun asked city officials why Doty’s ticket was issued. Transportation Department spokeswoman Adrienne Barnes offered no explanation but said the agency would have more to say at Friday’s meeting of a task force set up by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to study the city’s entire speed and red light camera program. The city has 83 speed cameras and 81 red light cameras.

It isn’t clear from the signature on the citation which police officer reviewed Doty’s ticket, and police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi didn’t say when asked, but added, “The department finds any error unacceptable.” The department has said that a single officer can review up to 1,200 citations in a given day.

Xerox spokesman Chris Gilligan did not address Doty’s citation. He noted in a statement that a “system-wide audit of the Baltimore photo enforcement program is ongoing and has resulted in implementing an additional manual review of citations at all camera locations.”

The Sun recently published an investigation focusing on the city’s speed camera program, which has generated more than $48 million since it began three years ago. The investigation found that citations can be inaccurate and that judges routinely throw out tickets for a range of problems.

The Sun has also shown that it is impossible for motorists to verify the alleged speeds with the information printed on tickets issued by Baltimore County, Howard County and the State Highway Administration.

Since the articles’ publication, several lawmakers have called for changes to the state law that governs the way the city and other jurisdictions operate speed camera programs. Gov. Martin O’Malley said Tuesday that state law bars contractors from being paid based on the number of citations issued or paid — an approach used by Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Howard County and elsewhere.

“The law says you’re not supposed to charge by volume. I don’t think we should charge by volume,” O’Malley said. “If any county is, they need to change their program.”

Modern children are being poisoned like never before in the history of human civilization. No wonder the rate of autism in America has skyrocketed to 1 in 88 children over the last few decades, putting autism squarely in the “epidemic” category.

But don’t expect any CDC action on this epidemic. The CDC knows full well why autism rates are exploding across America, but instead of admitting the truth, the CDC is running a cover story to protect the corporate interests of the real culprits: the medical corporations poisoning children for profit (see below).

It’s not just medical companies that are poisoning our children, by the way: They’re also being poisoned in other insidious ways that suppress free thinking, assault good health and crush children’s souls.

Here’s my list of the ten worst ways in which our children are being poisoned right now.

#1) Multiple vaccinations that inject mercury, aluminum, MSG and formaldehyde into children

It is an admitted fact that today’s vaccines given to children are intentionally formulated with mercury, aluminum, MSG and formaldehyde, all of which is insanely injected into the body of infants and children.

This is openly admitted by the CDC itself, which has emerged as a criminal front group for the vaccine industry. Rather than trying to determine why vaccines are causing so much autism, the CDC tries to hide the evidence, delay the hearings, and deploy smoke and mirrors to protect the criminally-operated vaccine industry where nearly every single vaccine manufacturer operating today has been found guilty of multiple felony crimes.

#2) Mercury fillings

Astonishingly, dentists in the USA continue to fill children’s mouths with the most toxic heavy metal known to man: Mercury.

They don’t call it mercury, of course, because that would raise too many questions. Instead, they call them “silver amalgam fillings.” But the No. 1 ingredient in these fillings is, of course, the heavy metal mercury.

#3) School lunches that use toxic processed food ingredients, including sodium nitrite

School lunches continue to serve our children a toxic cocktail of chemical food additives, partially-hydrogenated oils, chemical preservatives and even cancer-causing color fixers like sodium nitrite.

In addition to sodium nitrite, school lunches are also filled with GMOs which we now know cause huge cancer tumors in animals. The USDA, which is already in bed with Monsanto on the regulatory side, also buys masses of genetically engineered food to be used in school lunch programs.

#4) Television programming that poisons children’s brains with messages of materialism and inadequacy

Television was invented as a way to educate and uplift and population, but it has become dominated by commercial interests who brainwash children into worshipping materialism and being manipulated into feelings of inadequacy.

The point of this is to push sugary cereals, action figures, toys and junk foods into the minds of children so that they nag parents into buying it for them. Virtually all Saturday morning television, for example, has devolved into a “nag factor manipulation matrix” designed to brainwash children into begging their parents to purchase consumable items that generate profits for corporate advertisers.

Where is the education in television these days? It is now relegated to a few channels that focus on documentaries and non-fiction subjects, and even those channels are still funded by corporate interests.

#5) Public education that teaches revisionist history and toxic ideas about society

American children are being insidiously poisoned by public schools and all the atrociously damaging ideas those schools teach.

Many schools are now teaching what is essentially socialism or even communism. They attack and ridicule students who believe in the founding principles of America: patriotism, the Bill of Rights, individual liberty and the U.S. Constitution.

Children everywhere are being bathed in toxic poisons from all their personal care products, including soaps and shampoos, laundry detergents, fabric softeners and even toothpaste.

Most personal care products are loaded with cancer-causing synthetic chemicals. Laundry detergents bathe children’s clothing in cancer-causing chemicals which are then worn by the children and absorbed into their bodies. When children become teens, the toxic burden is increased even more through deodorants, makeup and cosmetics, perfumes and colognes. Nearly all conventional body care products contain cancer-causing chemicals, including the high-end, expensive brands.

#7) Toxic hydrofluosilicic acid dumped into the water supply after being mislabeled “fluoride”

Children are being wildly poisoned by the dumping of hydrofluosilicic acid into the water supply. This is incorrectly called “fluoride” but it’s actually a toxic byproduct of the chemical fertilizer industry or aluminum smelting industry.

Fluoride is so toxic that dumping it into a river or stream in the United States would be considered an act of ecological terrorism. Yet, somehow, it is legal to dump it into the water supply of human beings who then urinated it back into the rivers and streams where it poisons the environment.

Indoor air pollution is a significant source of toxic chemical exposure for children. Carpets, paints, wood floor and even furniture all give off toxic fumes that can promote cancer and aggravate allergies.

Many homes, schools and commercial buildings are contaminated with toxic molds that are also ingested by infants and children. Even hospitals circulate potentially deadly superbugs that can kill children.

#9) Video games

Make no mistake that children — especially boys — are being mentally poisoned by video games. These games teach boys that violence is normal through the relentless assault of ultra-realistic first-person shooters that put players in the position of violently murdering other human beings.

These games desensitize children to the real world, and they train children to grow up and join the military. Some of the most popular games are actually engineered and published by the military as recruiting systems for teens.

Take a look at the ultra realism (and violence) of “Far Cry 3″ in this teaser video. This is what your kids are playing when you buy them an Xbox:

One of the greatest crimes against children today is found in the realm of psychiatry. That dark art of anti-medicine pretends to “diagnose” children with “disorders” which are then claimed to be treated by mind-altering psychiatric drugs such as Ritalin and Prozac.

The entire industry of modern psychiatry is a criminal drug ring conducted for the sole purpose of generating profits by treating children as pharmaceutical disposal objects. Most of the psychiatric disorders found in the DSM-V manual are completely fabricated works of fiction. The drug industry and modern psychiatry run their fraud as a tag-team of criminals who prey on children.

The most effective group fighting this today is the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), found at www.CCHRint.org

According to a new court ruling, the government can decide whether or not you vaccinate your children. In an event where one parent is pro-vaccine and the other isn’t, what happens to the children? And if an agreement can’t be made, who decides if the children are vaccinated or not? This was the dilemma of one Australian family, where an agreement was never met. As a result, a court judge ruled that the fought-after 8 year old daughter would receive vaccinations, going against the mother’s wishes.

Highly concerned about the dangers of vaccines, the 8 year old’s mother decided to boost her daughters immune system through more natural means: organic food, limiting exposure to toxins, and homeopathic remedies. All the while, the girl’s father had been secretly getting his daughter vaccinated without the mother’s permission. Secretly, the daughter was vaccinated against:

Diphtheria

Tetanus

Hepatitis B

HIB

Pertussis

Polio

Measles, mumps, rubella

Meningococcal C.

So what happened in the end? Evidently this is where the court can make a decision for the child. In the judge’s ruling, the 8 year old girl is now required to receive all recommended vaccinations for her age and in the future. An interesting decision, as the judge felt that the mother was acting in her daughter’s best interest, while the father was a poor parent for having the young girl vaccinated secretly. She described the situation as a “dreadful and ongoing parental conflict”.

Waking up to Vaccine Dangers

The dangers and negative potentialities of vaccines are too long to list, so much so that entire texts have been created on the subject. The flu vaccine along comes with a myriad of negative possibilities, including paralysis, vomiting, immune system disorders, autoimmune diseases, and a killer nerve disease called Guillain-Barré Syndrome.

If you’re wondering why so many negative possibilities can come from ‘protecting yourself and your children’, many answers can be found on the CDC’s own website. There are numerous health-compromising substances found in vaccines, all partly responsible for the damaged induced by the shot. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s even shows what’s inside vaccines on it’s vaccines additives page:

MSG

Antibiotics

Aluminum

Formaldehyde

Thimerosal (a methyl mercury compound)

But thankfully, individuals and parents everywhere are waking up to the dangers associated with this (almost) forced ‘preventative measure’.

As the truth spreads throughout the nation, vaccine exemption rates continue to rise, with some of the latest stats showing an increase in exemption rates between 2005 and 2011. One 2011 survey found that more than 1 in 10 parents are now straying from the traditional vaccine schedule, and experts project the number to increase exponentially. In 8 difference states, over 1 in 20 public kindergartners are not receiving all the vaccines that the government ‘requires’ for school attendance.

Is it Your Choice, or the Government’s?

Unfortunately, the government doesn’t think it’s your choice as to whether or not you or your children are vaccinated. And as exemplified in the story above about the 8 year old girl, the courts will still decide if parents can’t agree. Despite the medical establishment’s hard push on vaccinations, the fact is that parents want the right to choose not only for themselves, but for their children. In one major poll, over 23 thousand mainstream readers of MSNBC still felt that it was okay for parents to opt out of vaccines for their kids.